Page:Weird Tales volume 11 number 02.pdf/96

Rh "She was smashed on those rooks at the western end of the island. Every soul was lost but me."

"When was that?" Griswold asked.

"In that storm—on the 27th. The captain thought that he was well to the eastward of this island. The schooner caved in like an empty barrel smashed against a stone. Never saw so much as a single plank afterward. Don't know how it happened, but I found myself flung up into a cleft in the wall, and somehow I managed to crawl to a place of safety."

"But found," said Griswold, "that you hadn't landed in Eden."

"In hell," returned the castaway. "I knew that years might pass and no ship ever sight this cursed island—or sight me on it. But I knew that I could not live for years—perhaps not even for months. I'm nearly starved. Tried to get a seal but couldn't make it."

"Well," Griswold told him, "there is no dearth of muckymuck in the Gorgon's lazaret, and you can make up for lost time."

Griswold, as he spoke, was launching his little dingey—dinkey, he called it.

"I thought," the castaway said, "that you would never see me."

"Lucky thing for you that I did! And 'tis horrible to think that I might have passed by and left you here to your fate. But—well, you're safe now. No use worrying about what might have been, you know."

Safe? Little did either man dream of that revelation which a few short minutes were to bring. In that moment in which Griswold had sighted him there on the rock wall, signaling so frantically—in that very moment the castaway (though neither man dreamed it) had received the doom of death.

For this man, as Cuthbert Griswold was soon to learn, was Ferdinand Chantrell.

alone?" queried the castaway as Griswold stepped into the little skiff.

"All alone, save for Pluto there. On my way from Antatu to Tamahnowis."

"I should think that you'd want a bigger boat and a crew of one at Griswold laughed.

"Some folks," said he, "think that I'm crazy to be Christopher-Columbusing about in a craft like the Gorgon; but I've been half-way around the world in that little tub. Maybe some day I'll circumnavigate the globe in it—just to show them that I'm not dippy."

Griswold was now moving toward the beach. The sloop was only fifty or sixty feet out.

"You seemed," said the other, "to know this place."

"Oh, yes. I have been here before, more than once. Queer place, this."

The next moment the bow rumbled up the strand and the little craft became stationary. Cuthbert Griswold arose and thrust forth a hand.

"Welcome, stranger," said he. "The little Gorgon isn't just what you'd call a palatial yacht, but I fancy that you'll find her better than these naked rocks of Flang. You are welcome to the best that she has to offer."

"You have saved my life!" exclaimed the other, wringing Griswold's hand—which was soon to send a bullet crashing into the speaker's heart. "And I am not a man that forgets. My name is Chantrell—Ferdinand Chantrell."

Griswold gave a low cry and dropped the other's hand as though it had been a deadly serpent.

"You!"

"What—what?" faltered the castaway, recoiling from that fearful visage which was thrust toward him.